Syrian air force strikes country's Sunni areas

Monday

Oct 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 29, 2012 at 10:56 AM

AMMAN, Jordan- Syrian jets bombarded Sunni Muslim regions in Damascus and around the country yesterday, activists said, as President Bashar Assad kept up air strikes against rebels despite a U.N.-brokered truce that now appears to be in tatters.

AMMAN, Jordan- Syrian jets bombarded Sunni Muslim regions in Damascus and around the country yesterday, activists said, as President Bashar Assad kept up air strikes against rebels despite a U.N.-brokered truce that now appears to be in tatters.

The Local Coordination Committees activists' organization said air raids killed 14 civilians, including women and children, in the town of Bara in the northern province of Idlib, where fighting has continued between Assad's forces and rebels who have seized large parts of the rugged region.

"The cease-fire is practically over. Damascus has been under brutal air raids since Day 1, and hundreds of people have been arrested," said veteran opposition campaigner Fawaz Tello, who is well-connected with rebels.

Speaking from Berlin, Tello said Sunni districts in the city of Homs, 90 miles north of Damascus, and surrounding countryside came under Syrian army shelling yesterday.

It was not possible to verify events because of Syrian restrictions on reporters' access.

Both sides in the 19-month-old conflict have violated the cease-fire to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday. Brokered by international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the truce supposedly began on Friday, the first day of the four-day holiday.

Syrian authorities blame "terrorists" for breaking the truce, and the opposition says a cease-fire is impossible while Assad moves tanks and uses artillery and jets against populated areas.

A statement by the Syrian military said "blatant" rebel violations proved they want to "fragment and destroy Syria."

"These terrorist groups must be confronted, their remnants chased, and an iron fist used to exterminate them and save the homeland from their evil," the statement said.

Brahimi hopes to end the conflict that has killed at least 32,000 people and further destabilized the Middle East. It began with a popular revolt in March last year against four decades of authoritarian rule by Assad and his late father.

The cease-fire won international support, including from Russia, China and Iran, President Assad's main foreign allies.

But the truce seems destined to share the fate of failed peace efforts that have preceded it, with dozens of people continuing to be killed daily and international and regional powers at odds as they back different sides.

A sectarian divide between Assad's minority Alawite sect and Syria's majority Sunnis also is growing, fueling religious fervor and attracting more foreign jihadists into the country.

In the capital Damascus, activists and residents reported explosions and smoke rising over the city as Syrian airforce jets bombed the suburbs of Irbin, Harasta and Zamalka.

Video taken by activists purportedly showed flattened buildings in Irbin, their floors sandwiched and debris filling the streets.

A statement by the Harasta Media Office, an opposition activist group, said aerial and ground bombardments had killed at least 45 in the district since Friday.

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